4 ms·

It's stretch to call what any of them have a "language".

tlavoie 3y ago
I think that your statement is more of a stretch, than the idea that quite intelligent, social creatures aren't using a language that we simply don't understand. I'd love to know what the local ravens are saying to each other; there is quite the variety of calls, and quite situational.
- fmajid 3y ago
  Corvids are able to recognize individual humans who were helpful to them (or harmful) and share that with others, it's hard to see how that can happen without language ("watch out for the weird standing monkey with the yellow feathers on top, he's likely to throw a stone at you").
  - underlipton 3y ago
    The crows that live nearby are wary of me, probably because of two incidents (they saw me standing next to a crow's body, which I'd come across during a walk; and, on another walk, a branch had suddenly broken out from under another crow as I passed the tree it was in). I hear a particular call whenever I pass by them now, though I basically never see them anymore.
  - tlavoie 3y ago
    My ravens are still wary of me, but they always have been. Somewhat less so in the last while, since I've been putting peanuts out for them; they'll still move away when I get close, but not far, and not until I've gotten fairly close. I really want to know what one's got against my little security cameras though... I've got video of one taking one off the railing I put the peanuts on, and (I assume) the same guy has been working to knock another off the driveway gate post. https://youtu.be/y3C-Tf8FeVA https://youtu.be/y3C-Tf8FeVA My son and his girlfriend had a great encounter with one, driving down the Dempster Highway in Yukon. It surfed the wind on the hood of their Jeep for something like 45 minutes, and hopped close enough to grab cat treats when they stopped for a bit. That's on YouTube as well.
famouswaffles 3y ago
We have known for decades now that bottlenose dolphins understand language, and I mean the regularities that distinguish it from ordinary communication because we tested them with an artificially constructed one. And I mean tested comprehension rather than production. Lot easier to write off results of the latter. The idea then that these highly social animals have the ability to understand an artificially constructed language but don't use one naturally is highly suspect. Especially when everything we can observe indicates it. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0010027784900039 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001002... "Comprehension, at levels far above chance, was shown for all of the sentence forms and sentence meanings that could be generated by the lexicon and the set of syntactic rules, and included the understanding of: (a) lexically novel sentences; (b) structurally novel sentences; (c) semantically reversible sentences that expressed relationships between objects; (d) sentences in which changes in modifier position changed sentence meaning; and (e) conjoined sentences (Phoenix). Additional abilities demonstrated included a broad and immediate generalization of the lexical items to different exemplars of objects; an ability to modulate the form of response to given action words, in order to apply the action appropriately to new objects, to different object attributes, or to different object locations; an ability to carry out instructions correctly despite changes in the context or location in which a sentence was given, or in the trainer providing the instructions; an ability to distinguish between different relational concepts; an ability to respond correctly to sentences given with no objects present in the tank until 30 seconds after the instruction was given (displacement tests); and an ability to report correctly that the particular object designated in a sentence was in fact not present in the tank, although all other objects were (Akeakamai). ...... The comprehension approach used was a radical departure from the emphasis on language production in studies of the linguistic abilities of apes; the result obtained offer the first convincing evidence of the ability of animals to process both semantic and syntactic features of sentences. "

I think that your statement is more of a stretch, than the idea that quite intelligent, social creatures aren't using a language that we simply don't understand. I'd love to know what the local ravens are saying to each other; there is quite the variety of calls, and quite situational.

fmajid 3y ago
Corvids are able to recognize individual humans who were helpful to them (or harmful) and share that with others, it's hard to see how that can happen without language ("watch out for the weird standing monkey with the yellow feathers on top, he's likely to throw a stone at you").
- underlipton 3y ago
  The crows that live nearby are wary of me, probably because of two incidents (they saw me standing next to a crow's body, which I'd come across during a walk; and, on another walk, a branch had suddenly broken out from under another crow as I passed the tree it was in). I hear a particular call whenever I pass by them now, though I basically never see them anymore.
- tlavoie 3y ago
  My ravens are still wary of me, but they always have been. Somewhat less so in the last while, since I've been putting peanuts out for them; they'll still move away when I get close, but not far, and not until I've gotten fairly close. I really want to know what one's got against my little security cameras though... I've got video of one taking one off the railing I put the peanuts on, and (I assume) the same guy has been working to knock another off the driveway gate post. https://youtu.be/y3C-Tf8FeVA https://youtu.be/y3C-Tf8FeVA My son and his girlfriend had a great encounter with one, driving down the Dempster Highway in Yukon. It surfed the wind on the hood of their Jeep for something like 45 minutes, and hopped close enough to grab cat treats when they stopped for a bit. That's on YouTube as well.

famouswaffles 3y ago

We have known for decades now that bottlenose dolphins understand language, and I mean the regularities that distinguish it from ordinary communication because we tested them with an artificially constructed one. And I mean tested comprehension rather than production. Lot easier to write off results of the latter. The idea then that these highly social animals have the ability to understand an artificially constructed language but don't use one naturally is highly suspect. Especially when everything we can observe indicates it. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0010027784900039 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001002... "Comprehension, at levels far above chance, was shown for all of the sentence forms and sentence meanings that could be generated by the lexicon and the set of syntactic rules, and included the understanding of: (a) lexically novel sentences; (b) structurally novel sentences; (c) semantically reversible sentences that expressed relationships between objects; (d) sentences in which changes in modifier position changed sentence meaning; and (e) conjoined sentences (Phoenix). Additional abilities demonstrated included a broad and immediate generalization of the lexical items to different exemplars of objects; an ability to modulate the form of response to given action words, in order to apply the action appropriately to new objects, to different object attributes, or to different object locations; an ability to carry out instructions correctly despite changes in the context or location in which a sentence was given, or in the trainer providing the instructions; an ability to distinguish between different relational concepts; an ability to respond correctly to sentences given with no objects present in the tank until 30 seconds after the instruction was given (displacement tests); and an ability to report correctly that the particular object designated in a sentence was in fact not present in the tank, although all other objects were (Akeakamai). ...... The comprehension approach used was a radical departure from the emphasis on language production in studies of the linguistic abilities of apes; the result obtained offer the first convincing evidence of the ability of animals to process both semantic and syntactic features of sentences. "